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Notre Dame Lab Violated Animal Welfare Laws in Study on Mice
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ACTION ALERT:
Contact:
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President[email protected]
SAMPLE MESSAGE:
Father Jenkins,
Please terminate the experiment which intentionally abused a mouse and left other mice with incisions gaping open, or missing limbs. This project must not continue and all staff connected to this debacle must be immediately terminated.
Notre Dame Lab Violated Animal Welfare Laws in Study on Mice
From USNews.com, May 20, 2020
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame violated federal animal
welfare laws last year by mistreating mice during lab studies, according to
documents the school filed with a federal agency.
The university self-reported the violations to the federal Office of
Laboratory Animal Welfare and suspended the lab’s operations last August
because of “serious deviation” from animal treatment guidelines, the
documents say.
The documents, which are letters and reports university officials sent to
the federal agency, were obtained by the animal advocacy group Stop Animal
Exploitation Now through a Freedom of Information Act request to the federal
agency. The group released the documents to news media outlets, the South
Bend Tribune reported Wednesday.
Notre Dame’s vice president of research, Robert Bernhard, detailed the
violations of animal welfare policy in an August 2019 letter sent to the
federal agency.
On Aug. 9, 2019, veterinary staff at the Freimann Life Sciences Center saw
two mice in a lab that had missing limbs and another pair with their “bowels
exteriorized” after surgery, with sutures and clips missing. Ten mice had
tumors larger than the allowable two centimeters.
All the mice were euthanized after they “likely experienced unrelieved pain
or distress,” Bernhard’s letter says.
University researchers had injected the mice with breast cancer cells to
study tumors.
An internal investigation found that lenient oversight and lack of
communication contributed to the violations, according to a letter the
university later sent to the federal agency.
The university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which oversees
animal research, concluded that one person was responsible for a
“significant number” of the violations, which also included intentionally
hitting a mouse on a table. That person was removed from working with
animals but remains in the lab, according to the documents.
The animal advocacy group has requested the university fire those involved
in the study and its federal grant money to return, Executive Director
Michael Budkie said.
A university spokesman told the South Bend Tribune that officials promptly
addressed the violations when they were informed of them and followed all
reporting protocols.
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